Chamber and committees

NHS Grampian is responsible for providing care in its area and making any assessment of the impact supporting refugees and asylum seekers has had on local health services.

The Scottish Government is aware that there are ongoing global supply issues with products which are licensed for the treatment ADHD. At present, it is anticipated that most of the global shortage of ADHD medicines will be resolved between the end of December 2023 and January 2024. Scottish Government officials will continue to monitor the situation for any further developments.

It is for NHS Boards and healthcare professionals to determine how best to treat patients, including any changes to prescribing practice and prescribing medications, or to advise patients of any anticipated medicine supply issues.

A UK-wide National Patient Safety Alert (NatPSA) was issued on 27 September for medicines used for the treatment of ADHD. This notified healthcare professionals in both primary and secondary care about the ongoing supply issue, and guidance has been issued advising prescribers to not initiate new patients on products affected by this shortage until the supply issues resolve; to identify all patients currently prescribed these products and establish how much supply they have remaining; and providing clinical information on alternative suitable medication when appropriate.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of our many varied cultural and historic sites, which includes battlefields. We deliver support for the historic environment through our sponsorship of Scotland’s lead public body for the historic environment, Historic Environment Scotland.

Historic Environment Scotland is responsible for protecting sites of national historic significance through designations including listing buildings, scheduled monuments, and maintaining the Inventory of Historic Battlefields.

In 2019, Scottish Ministers issued a Direction which requires notification of any new applications for non-householder development that may affect designated historic battlefields to be given to Scottish Ministers. This allows additional considerations for the significance of the site to be taken into account during decision making and informs a national overview of development in the planning system that affects designated historic battlefields.

Questions regarding day-to-day operational matters of Historic Environment Scotland, including information relating to the appeal process for land designations, are best answered directly by Historic Environment Scotland.

There is information available on the Historic Environment Scotland website regarding the designations process, however I have also asked Historic Environment Scotland to write directly to the member with a response to his question.

Scottish Government fund peatland restoration via the Peatland Action partnership. The individual delivery partners that make up this partnership apply their own grant offer terms and conditions regarding protections and restrictions on the land that receives money from them for undertaking peatland restoration. I would refer the MSP to those organisations for further information.

At a programme level, the Peatland ACTION Monitoring Strategy ( https://www.nature.scot/doc/peatland-action-monitoring-strategy ) is putting in place a structured approach to monitoring sites that have had their peatland restored to evidence whether we are delivering effective restoration.

The Scottish Government is advised on food safety and standards matters by Food Standards Scotland (FSS). They have advised that stakeholders were consulted in 2019 on the Honey (Scotland) Regulations 2015, to ensure the regulations remained operable and effective after the UK had left the EU. This included a specific focus on proposed changes to how country of origin would be labelled after the UK left the EU. The views of stakeholders including Scottish honey producers were considered to ensure the rules remained relevant in Scotland.

FSS notes Mr Burnett’s interest in this area and would welcome the opportunity to meet with him if he would find that helpful.

The Scottish Government is advised on food safety and standards matters by Food Standards Scotland (FSS). They have advised that in August 2023, they contacted a range of interested parties to seek initial views on the proposed changes at EU level. This included eleven trade associations and honey producers along with the 32 Scottish Local authorities. FSS included a statement in the letter issued stating that stakeholder data would be anonymised, and we are therefore unable to disclose the specific details of the businesses included for data protection reasons. Responses are currently being considered and this will help inform policy thinking ahead of a review of the domestic honey regulations and working with the other departments with food labelling and composition standards responsibilities across the UK.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-22774 on 21 November 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The other two medicines alluded to in that answer are Orkambi ® , and Symkevi ® .

If any cystic fibrosis medicine is not recommended in the final multiple technology appraisal (MTA) guidance, clinicians in Scotland will be able to request the use of that medicine on a case-by-case basis for individual patients using the Peer Approved Clinical System (PACS) Tier Two process. National guidance explicitly states that Health Boards should not take account of the cost of medicines when considering applications using the PACS Tier Two system.

Net mental health expenditure is published on the Public Health Scotland website Scottish health service costs under data files mental health expenditure Excel workbook . This information is available for financial years 2011-12 to 2021-22 for each NHS Board in Scotland, split by various types of expenditure including Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Please note that expenditure data is collected by broad specialties and therefore categories may include multiple services.

Scottish Government continues to provide overall increases to mental health spending. Between the Scottish Government and NHS boards we expect spending on Mental Health to be well in excess of £1.3 bn in 2023/24.

Expenditure on CAMHS rose from £88m in 2020-21 to £97.6m in 2021-22, an increase of £9.3m or 10.6% - representing 0.66% of total NHS expenditure.

We are now seeing significant and sustained improvements in CAMHS waiting times. In the quarter ending September 2023, 75.6% of CAMHS patients started treatment within 18 weeks of referral, up from 67.9% in same quarter the previous year, and 13 out of 14 CAMHS Services had effectively eliminated their long waits (where 3% or fewer of all waits are over one year).

We continually monitor CAMHS waiting times performance and backlogs and are directing tailored support to those Boards with the longest waits, providing access to professional advice, ensuring they have robust improvement plans in place and monitoring their implementation.

We have commissioned all Boards to submit performance trajectories up to March 2024, including a timeline for clearing long waits. These will be updated annually and used to inform further targeted improvement work to ensure all Boards consistently meet the CAMHS waiting times standard.

We have allocated £48.6 million of supplementary funding to Boards this year via the Mental Health Outcomes Framework to improve the quality and delivery of mental health services for all. This is in addition to £36.7 million allocated to Health Boards via the Outcomes Framework in 2022-23; and to the total package of core funding that Health Boards receive.